To do this, HP is inventing a whole bunch of new technologies, including a new super-fast way to transfer data that uses light (i.e. photonics) and, most importantly, a new kind of memory called "memristors." HP hopes to have prototypes of The Machine available in 2016, and the device should be on sale by 2018, if HP's plans stick.

All of this will need new software apps and a new operating system to run them, and this new OS sees HP running away from Microsoft (and to some extent VMware) as fast as it can.

When CTO Martin Fink, the head of HP Labs, first showed off The Machine at HP's annual customer conference in June he said, "We want to reignite in all of our universities around the world on operating system research, which we think has been dormant or stagnant for decades."

He then said HP was working on new operating systems based on Linux and Android (but not Windows).

There's still a lot of iffiness surrounding The Machine. Other researchers, including some at IBM, are working on competing new kinds of memory for new data center computers and are getting close to making those products available, Simonite reports.

And HP has actually been talking about memristors since about 2010, at that time saying commercial products would be available in 2013. Today, the company's timeline is 2016.

So even if it has The Machine ready by 2018, that could be too little, too late.